Only as this tale about a young man discovering he can teleport himself unfurls, his attitude doesn’t gain perspective nearly enough. His ego trips land him in a bank vault, send him from New York City to Tokyo — and, in a show of true ambition (or plain silly FX), from a sidewalk into a Mercedes convertible.

The note of contempt lasts long enough to pose this query: Whose contempt, exactly? David’s or the filmmakers?

Talented director Doug Liman has made a fast and furiously edited movie that seems bent on leaping, like David, from the demands of the moment to another place.

“Jumper” skips emotional traction (or humor) in what feels like a rush to the inevitable sequel or two.

Liman’s pacing seems to prove the movie’s point that a guy with unusual gifts can misuse them (even be stunted by them).

So let’s slow down.

The “chump” David once was is a shy high-schooler smitten by a sweet girl named Millie and bullied by a jerk named Mark.

After a brutish exchange, David walks onto the fragile ice of a river to retrieve a gift. Instead of drowning after breaking through, he finds himself miraculously elsewhere.

Later, when his father, an afternoon drinker still furious at being abandoned by his wife (Diane Lane in a hurried cameo), bursts through his bedroom door, David lands once again on the floor of the Ann Arbor public library.

There’s a lot of bullying in this movie, from bonehead Mark to David’s Dad (Michael Rooker) to Samuel L. Jackson.

Wearing his hair dyed white, Jackson plays a highly effective Jumper slayer, or Paladin, whose centuries-old motto might be, “I have had it with these #$@% jumpers on this #$@% planet!”

Liman, the director of adrenalized rides “Go” and “The Bourne Identity” had help making “Jumper” narratively jittery.

And the filmmakers seem aware of David’s failings. On a TV set, we glimpse flood victims scrambling to survive raging waters. David grabs an umbrella and heads out. But you’d have to be a chump to imagine heroism where narcissism rules, they seem to tell us.

In the end, the script short-shrifts David’s transformation. He clocks an awful lot of wormhole time just to go from selfish to mildly less so.

When did getting the girl (Rachel Bilson does an aware turn as older Millie) and amassing much coin become the only ambitions of the American superhero?